So how much free time does a foreign assistant English teacher in Japan have? How much YEN does it take for a week's worth of food? How much do the trains cost? It would be awesome if these and other questions about teaching in Japan could be answered.

p.s. why is everything green now?

Posted on: 2009/9/9 22:35

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noname wrote:So how much free time does a foreign assistant English teacher in Japan have?

ALT or AETs (Assistant Language/English Teachers) usually work 36-40 hours a week. My contract is for 8:15-4:00 but I usually come in just before 8 and sometimes stay until 5 or even later. It depends on how much prep work I have for the next days classes. If I use my time wisely, I can usually leave around 4. So we usually have lots of free time. We usually don't work on Saturdays or Sundays unless there is a school event or open school, but we usually get a day off later on down the road to make up for it. Different ALT companies have different work hours. One company I looked at going through wanted me to stay until 5:30 everyday.Quote:

How much YEN does it take for a week's worth of food?

This depends on how much you eat. My school lunch is about 250 each day. And for breakfast, I can grab something from the store if I am in a hurry, but I prefer some tofu or oatmeal in the morning, those are really cheap. For dinner, you can get really cheap dinners for around 5 or 6 hundred yen at stores, and there will probably be cheap places to eat. I can eat for about 1000 yen/day, sometimes more, sometimes less. Also, at night there is discounted food at the grocery stores!

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How much do the trains cost?

It depends on how far you want to go. For my daily commmute, I pay 310yen each way. At my old job, I could drive or ride a bike to work. So this depends on your situation.

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p.s. why is everything green now

Kouryuu willed it and it was so.

Recently the pay at some of the ALT dispatch companies has decreased. RCS was going to give me 240,000/month, Interac was 255,000 and Hart I think is offering about 220,000 (for new hires/sometimes depends on location too) But JET is accepting applications now and they pay 300,000/month, and they only accept applications once a year.

Also, if you are considering working in Japan, Most contracts are for one year (sometimes you can get a 6 month one, but those aren't so common). The companies and the schools expect the ALT to stay for the whole school year. So be prepared to do that, and even if you don't like your location, you will have to stay there for at least one year, so try to accept locations that you want. If you reject your offered position on JET, you won't get a second one, so be warned, but Interac and RCS let me choose where I wanted to go out of all the places that they had available. And they really seemed to care about my preferences.

If you have any more questions you can PM me or email me. I'm not on JET anymore, but am still in the ALT business, I can give you advice on interview and application techniques too.